The unconscious
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Should we examine our inner life, or fulfill ourselves first and foremost through action?
Turning inward sheds light on who we are, but can slide into rumination far from the world; throwing oneself into action accomplishes much, but risks dodging the question of who is acting, and for what. To take a position is to say where the self is truly found: in the return to oneself, or in what one does.
Are emotions an obstacle to thought or a source of knowledge?
Should we distrust what we feel, a disturbance that clouds judgement, hear in it a fine perception of what matters, or learn to train it? To take a position is to say how much credit to give our emotions when they contradict cold reason, and whether wisdom lies in silencing them, following them, or shaping them.
What makes me remain myself through time?
What makes me the same person as the child in the old photographs, or as the one I will be in thirty years? If nothing stable endures, promises, remorse, and pride in a past self lose their footing; if a core remains, no change ever truly remakes me. To take a position is to say what exactly we are holding onto when we say "me."
Should we assign blame and credit?
Praising a child, resenting a friend, taking pride in a success, blaming ourselves for a fault: we spend our days assigning blame and credit. Yet what each of us is, talents as much as leanings, was largely made without us, and one can admire a skill while knowing its acquisition owed nothing to the will. Whether our acts are determined is a neighbouring question, with its own axis; what is decided here is an attitude: to take merit and fault seriously, to keep them as tools, or to let go of them. To take a position is to say what we owe one another in praise, reproach, and forgiveness, and what would become of our bonds if we stopped keeping accounts.